Digitized Dissent: Mocking Monarchy in Absolutist France

A collaboration between Kathrina LaPorta (Department of French) and Christophe Schuwey (Université de Fribourg), “Digitized Dissent” is a multi-year project linking literature, politics, and digital humanities to provide a new way to read and study the pamphlets written against French monarch Louis XIV (1643-1715). While Louis XIV is often associated with the glory and magnificence of Versailles, these works shed light on the opposition to the Sun King’s policies at home and abroad by an army of authors proclaiming to “fight with the quill pen.”

The website will present a full critical edition of three satirical pamphlets (L’Alcoran de Louis XIV (1695) [Louis XIV’s Koran], Conseil privé de Louis le Grand (1696) [The Privy Council of Louis the Great], and the Entretien entre Louis XIV, Roi de France et Madame la Marquise de Maintenon (1710) [Dialogue between Louis XIV, King of France, and Madame the Marquise de Maintenon]), supplemented with contextual notes. By combining the erudition of a critical edition with the interactive display possibilities a web page can offer, the project will bring to life for contemporary readers the political personages who populated the early modern French cultural imaginary.